Everquest does very little with mob resists. In games like Darkest Dungeon, resist stats of mobs to dots and stuns, are openly shown to the player, which allowed developers to make them relevant, you will get severely punished if you don't take them into account, and rewarded if you do. In EQ mob resists are hidden, which means developers need to be careful of building mechanics around them. EQ players are able to flat out ignore resists and ignore sporadic failed checks. EQ made resists irrelevant for most mobs outside of a very limited number of raid mobs and theme-specific zones, where players will get a hard resist every time. This lack of dynamic gameplay in EQ results in tedious and boring gameplay where players can just automate the combat through macros casting the same spell order over and over. Debuffs in EQ are also very simplified as a result, there is no immediate repercussion for putting the incorrect debuffs on mobs or to stun a unstunnable mob. If resists were shown, you could increase cast time of certain spells and stuns, and add gameplay elements like riposte stuns to failed stuns, which would result in a more severe punishment for failing, and a bigger reward for succeeding to consider the mob's resists. You could also reward players for succeeding against a mob's checks as a team, where a succession of spells that land without resists, allows a 2 second stun to become a 4 second stunlock for example, this would reward player interaction within a group. Resists could also be dynamic instead of static, successive avoidance of negative resist checks could lower overall mob resist of a longer fight like a raid mob, which would make sense and which would require players to act in unison. Showing this info would allow deeper mechanics to be built around them, and at the same time help new players understand the resist system. Why hide this info from the player and why implement all these resist checks if players ignore them 99% of the time because they're hidden.
small edit, the title should be: "Mob resists checks should be shown." Negative checks are obviously shown in EQ's chat window when spells don't land.
I've always thought it would be a reasonable 'identify' type spell. Cast it on a mob, and the spell tells you just the weakest and strongest resist of the mob. "This creature appears weak against cold, and strong against disease."
I mean, you figure it out pretty quick just by watching resists the first time you encounter something? Then you repeat the same content for months or years.
No it isn't to much details. You could do something simple like this. NPC cast nuke onto Player1 (45% chance to land, MinBase 100, MaxBase 120, Crit chance 27%) misses. Player1 cast mez onto NPC (90% chance to land) Player1 cast nuke onto NPC (85% chance to land, MinBase 1000, MaxBase 1200, Crit chance 27%) hits for 1134 damage. Player1 cast nuke onto NPC (85% chance to land, MinBase 1000, MaxBase 1200, CritChance 27%, LuckyChance 10%, DoubleChance 5%, CritAmount 450%) hits crit for 5434 damage. Player1 cast fire onto NPC (90% chance to land....) Player1 cast ice onto NPC (15% chance to land....) Basically just add all the stats for every hit including melee to include all mod values and percent chance for different types of hits. I don't know all their calculations so maybe anything static that doesn't depends on the NPC resist or your resist shouldn't be listed since you can just go find the value under stat window. Anything that can change based on calculations due to npc defense etc should be listed. Yes leave it default to hidden but for those of us who like to calculate stuff to the 10th decimal we would love all this data for parsing and seeing if some odd combo of items may end up being better than what most use.
Well, if you have the data availabe in-game, "figuring it out" should come with a substantial punishment. Resists should be in % to make sense. -Shaman is overconfident, and casts a disease dot on a mob with 90% disease resistance. Not only will the mob be very likely to resist, if it does, it will put the shaman at the top of the aggro list. -Enc is dumb enough to try to stun a mob with a 90% stun resist, it will riposte the stun and the enc is now stunned for 4 seconds. But you also get rewarded for enforcing checks for example. If you stun a mob with low resist to stuns, not only will the mob be more susceptible to the stun, the stun will last longer for example. But it's not a free ride, because mobs with susceptibility to stuns can still rarely cause failed checks, so now risk-taking in exhange for rewards is part of the game. If you show the resists, you can build gameplay around it, players will need to judge risks, boring macros will be punished, and active gameplay rewarded. It also allows you to slow down gameplay a bit, with more thought put into casting spells, so EQ does not devolve further into an automated button-mashing macro spamfest.
Sounds terrible, having that much information displayed loses an element of gameplay. I'd rather they go the Monster Hunter route, where very, very little information is given to the players.
Don't forget that part of the resist system does checks on caster level, target level and I think spell level as well so it isn't always just a straight check of the NPC's resists. It is possible for a higher level player to have an easier time getting things to land then a lower level player. Seems like an easy way for someone to cheese agro and maintain the ability to tank. Such as an SK tanking mobs with resists That would kill their AE stuns in some raids. In general that sounds like it would punish any class that doesn't have a way to damage mobs with different resists when they come upon mobs that resist the spell lines they have.
Doesn't seem very engaging just to look at a mob's status window and then never even try to cast spells it's resistant to because there might be a punishment mechanic. I don't think they're going to revamp the entire game for what amounts to the same outcome - a one time learning curve (or just looking at some community compiled list) and then never casting that type of spell on that mob again.
Druids with flame lick is nowhere near the agro you are suggesting and they don't want agro in the first place while classes that want it could abuse this.
Abilities that put someone at the top of an aggro list does not "maintain their ability to tank". Spamming something that puts you at the top of the aggro list +1 (or whatever insignificant number it was changed to the last time) is useless if the goal is to maintain aggro. Taunt spamming is no way to tank, you need to generate significantly more aggro, the only thing a taunt really does is rearrange the aggro list, and you would immediately drop down that list again if it was not for abilities that generate far more aggro than taunt and swing aggro can generate. However, putting a pure caster at the top of an aggro list is significant, it puts the caster at significant risk of death. It takes but one server tick for a mob to get a full round in on that caster, and the mob will always get at least round in before the tank regains aggro due to server ticks. The game currently is far too free of risk.
Maintaining agro or the ability to grab agro quickly is a key tool for a tank and one of your suggested penalties would be a major boon for a class that wants to be the top on agro. Once people know what the resists are they are unlikely to every be an issue unless someone is causing problems on purpose.
Every tank has the ability to immediately get on top of the aggro list. Have you played EQ in the last decade? The last time tanks in EQ had issues maintaining aggro, battleblade was still using the EQ forums. Tanks have not had to fight for aggro in years, I would have to go out of my way to lose aggro nowadays.
And you don't think they wouldn't jump at new methods of getting agro that are possibly better and cost less to use?
An ingame NPC/monster database catalogue would be nice. Showing an animated 3D picture of the NPC with it's rough stats, abilites, and some lore. For the resists if only has to be noted how vulnerable or especially resistant to which types of elements the NPC is.
